"At this point, when he was first in the hospital, many of his Hare Krishna friends would come to visit him; I often saw their saffron robes in the corridors. They would come to visit poor, blind, blank Greg and flock around him; they saw him as having achieved 'detachment,' as an 'Enlightened One.'"

"His happy constitution (even when he had, with great pains, half demolished it) made him forget everything when he was before a venison pasty, or over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded he has known more happy moments than any prince on earth."

From On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History, by Nicholas A. Basbanes

THE FIRST

"The first American passports were designed and printed in 1783 by Benjamin Franklin, at a small printing shop he had set up for his personal amusement in France, his home for nine years during the Revolution."

Thursday, April 24, 2014

"But men are born, so the human form existed before the human race did, and the immortal gods were endowed with that form. Accordingly we must state not that the gods have human shape, but that our human form is divine."

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

This is my friend, Nick DiMartino. He's got a new novel out, a mystery called Student Union. It's a page-turner. I just finished it tonight. Come Tuesday, the 29th, at 7PM, I'll be introducing him at the University Book Store. He'll be reading and signing. Come check it out.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

"My only concern is, that I shall hardly be able to do justice to my master's arguments and expressions, which must needs suffer by my want of capacity, as well as by translation into our barbarous English."

Monday, April 21, 2014

Come, walk with me,There's only theeTo bless my spirit now -We used to love on winter nightsTo wander through the snow;Can we not woo back old delights?The clouds rush dark and wildThey fleck with shade our mountain heightsThe same as long agoAnd on the horizon rest at lastIn looming masses piled;While moonbeams flash and fly so fastWe scarce can say they smiled -

Come walk with me, come walk with me;We were not once so fewBut Death has stolen our companyAs sunshine steals the dew -He took them one by one and weAre left the only two;So closer would my feelings twineBecause they have no stay but thine -

'Nay call me not - it may not beIs human love so true?Can Friendship's flower droop on for yearsAnd then revive anew?No, though the soil be wet with tears,How fair soe'er it grewThe vital sap once perishedWill never flow againAnd surer than that dwelling dread,The narrow dungeon of the deadTime parts the hearts of men -'

They struggled their legs and blindly loved, those puppies
inside my jacket as I walked through town. They crawled
for warmth and licked each other -- their poor mother
dead, and one kind boy to save them. I spread
my arms over their world and hurried along.

At Ellen's place I knocked and waited -- the tumult
invading my sleeves, all my jacket alive.
When she came to the door we tumbled -- black, white,
gray, hungry -- all over the living room floor
together, rolling, whining, happy and blind.

Monday, April 14, 2014

I saw my toes the other day.I hadn't looked at them for months.Indeed, they might have passed away.And yet they were my best friends once.When I was small, I knew them well.I counted on them up to tenAnd put them in my mouth to tellThe larger from the lesser. ThenI loved them better than my ears,My elbows, adenoids, and heart.But with the swelling of the yearsWe drifted, toes and I, apart.Now, gnarled and pale, each said, j'accuse!--I hid them quickly in my shoes.

"And yet she thought those stars moved in such measure
To do their sovereign honour and delight
As sooth'd her mind with sweet enchanting pleasure,
Although the various change amazed her sight
And her weak judgment did entangle quite"

"Blessed be down-to-earth! Blessed be highs!
Blessed be the detachment of dumb love
In that broad-backed, low-set man
Who feared debt all his life, but now and then
Could make a splash like the salmon he said was
'As big as a wee pork pig by the sound of it.'"